Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Extension of Prosecutorial Immunities

When a civil rights lawsuit claims “that a prosecutor’s management of a trial-related information system is responsible for a constitutional error at [a] particular trial, the prosecutor responsible for the system enjoys absolute immunity just as would the prosecutor who handled the particular trial itself.”

The case of Van de Kamp v. Goldstein (07-854) involved a plea to the Court to head off a civil rights damages lawsuit by a man who had been prosecuted and convicted of murder in 1980. That conviction had been based in part upon the testimony of a jailhouse informant alleging a confession to the murder.

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